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The term scaffolding, used since the 1300s, is defined as a "temporary framework of platforms and poles constructed to provide accommodation for workmen and their materials during the erection, repairing or decoration of a building" (1989, Oxford English Dictionary, New York: Oxford University Press). The three parts of this definition point directly to what teachers need to know about classroom scaffolding.
THEORETICAL DEFINITION
Scaffolding is, first, a design to provide support for students but only enough to allow the student to complete the task alone. Judith Winn (1994, "Promises and Challenges of Scaffolded Instruction," Learning Disabilities Quarterly 17: 89-104) states that a teacher is seeking through scaffolding to boost a student's self-esteem and to maximize students' opportunities to assume ownership and "responsibility for their own learning" (89). The ownership of the responsibility is why the term "temporary" is so important. Scaffolding is actually like a bridge used to build upon what students already know to arrive at something they do not know. Dennis Searle (1984, "Scaffolding: Who's Building Whose Building?," Language Arts 61: 480-483) observes that scaffolding must not result in the "imposition of a structure on the student" (481). If scaffolding is properly administered, it will act as an enabler, not as a disabler.
Scaffolding also provides "accommodations for workmen and their materials." The students are the workmen, and the material is the knowledge they already have in storage. The scaffolding is the "accommodation" for the students, not changes made in a class for a special student but support for students. If a teacher can identify what information or skill students are...